How I became interested in Cyrenaicism
In 2017, I underwent a powerful religious experience which I interpreted as an experience of Christ. Given how indescribably profound and intense that experience was, I do not blame myself for coming to what I now regard as a quite implausible explanation. Nevertheless, I enjoyed what becoming a Christian brought to my life — namely, a set of spiritual practices which helped to structure my life, as well as a set of values to help me navigate my choices and avoidances. When, about nine months later, I lost my belief in God and returned to my lifelong agnosticism, I missed having that compass, as it were, for how to live.
Like many people nowadays, I turned to ancient philosophy to find a more secular way of life. I briefly considered Stoicism, but while there was much to commend it — namely, the psychological practices designed to bring peace of mind — I found the true core of Stoicism too moralistic and demanding. Stoicism would’ve appeared wonderful to me if I were a stand-up-straight kind of guy with a powerful sense of duty, but I’m not — I’m unashamedly laid back, and my deepest desire is easy living. Thus, I was much more attracted to ancient hedonism, especially that of Epicurus.
When I tell people that I am a hedonist, they either laugh with a wink or look uncomfortable. That’s because in common parlance, a hedonist is someone who adheres to what in philosophy is called Sybaritic hedonism. Sybaritic hedonism gets its name from the city-state Sybaris where its inhabitants, according to Herodotus, binge-drank themselves into destruction. In other words, a hedonist, so most people think, is someone who indulges in pleasure in an unwise, unhealthy way. But that’s not at all what I mean when I say I’m a hedonist — what I mean is that I adhere to a rich philosophical tradition, most famously advocated by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which holds that pleasure is the highest good and that the art of living involves rationally maximising pleasure and minimising pain.
As Bentham put it: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”
Although the early utilitarian philosophers — i.e. Mill and Bentham — are the most famous hedonists, hedonism as a doctrine stretches back much further in the history of philosophy. The earliest hedonist school of philosophy we know of is Cārvāka, an ancient Indian tradition which scandalised Indian religion by advocating a materialist metaphysics and an empiricist epistemology — which is to say they thought all which exists is physical, nothing which exists is supernatural; and knowledge is gained via the senses, not, for example, via revelation. It is from Cārvāka that we find what may be the most beautiful summary of hedonism in existence:
While life is yours, live joyously
None can escape
Death’s searching eye
When once this frame of ours they burn
How shall it ever again return?
For some people, this poetic fragment might appear like a call to party like the Sybaritics — to adopt a philosophy of, as St Paul put it, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” But in fact philosophical hedonism is much wiser than that. Perhaps the most famous ancient hedonist, Epicurus, explains: “Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion…” But he then cautions: “And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatever, but often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure.”
In other words, the art of maximising pleasure in one’s life involves a hedonic calculus whereby you must only pursue pleasures which don’t bring an excess of pain in their wake and whereby you sometimes have to endure pain when it will bring you an excess of pleasure as a consequence. For example, an extra slice of cake will be pleasant in the moment, but make a habit of over-indulging food and it will damage your health in the long-term, perhaps by giving you diabetes. In such cases, philosophical hedonism teaches — much to the delight of strict grandparents — that you must learn to control your desires and sometimes defer gratification. By following hedonic calculus, you can achieve what tends to be the goal of ancient hedonisms — living pleasantly. Most people attracted to this ideal of living pleasantly are drawn to the philosophy of Epicurus, quoted above.
Indeed, it was through Epicurus that I discovered and became attracted to philosophical hedonism as a pragmatic way of life. However, like many others, I eventually grew disappointed with Epicurus’ philosophy because of his strange and paradoxically ascetic hedonism — for Epicurus, pleasure is merely the absence of pain, particularly the mental pain of anxiety. In other words, Epicureanism is a form of negative hedonism which values the avoidance of pain over the seeking of pleasure. Whatever merits an analgesic philosophy like this might have, it certainly wasn’t my ideal of hedonism. Indeed, I was delighted when I read that a contemporaneous hedonist school made fun of Epicureanism by saying that this state of absence of pain is the condition of a corpse!
And that witticism is how I discovered the Cyrenaic school. In most histories of philosophy, the Cyrenaics are presented and dismissed as crude, proto-Epicureans, adherents of a form of Sybaritic hedonism who, like children, don’t possess the moral ability to defer gratification. But through reading the scholar Kurt Lampe’s wonderful book The Birth of Hedonism, which is a scholarly reconstruction of Cyrenaicism from the existing doxography, I discovered a philosophical school of hedonism every bit as wise and sophisticated as that of the Epicureans, but arguably far more attractive because it doesn’t limit itself to the mere absence of pain.
In particular, I have come to greatly admire the founder of Cyrenaic philosophy — Aristippus of Cyrene. In anecdotes recorded by Xenophon and Diogenes Laertius, Aristippus is presented as an enigmatic and witty philosopher who eagerly seeks pleasure, especially luxurious and sensual pleasures, but who nevertheless greatly values mental serenity, philosophical education, and the virtues of adaptability, courage, and sociability — all for the sake of presentism, which is the core Aristippean teaching of enjoying whatever pleasures are present and not being troubled by desires for what you don’t have.
In future posts, I will introduce and explore Cyrenaic philosophers and their philosophy in greater detail. In the meantime, if you’re interested in joining a growing group of people interested in exploring Cyrenaic philosophy, please search for New Cyrenaicism on Facebook.